Sausages have been traditionally made by filling the natural intestines of sheep or other animals, with a sausage product whereupon the filled natural casing was formed into links for cooking. In more modern times, sausages are predominantly made by introducing an emulsion into an artificial casing, which encases the sausage material through linking and preliminary cooking. Machines for making sausages with artificial casings have a high volume capability (up to 30,000 sausages per hour). Efforts have been made to use these high-speed machines with natural casings. However, because of the nature of the natural casings including their relatively shorter and variable length and non-uniform diameter, modern sausage encasing machines have not achieved the volume and capacity with natural casings as they do with artificial casings.
It is therefore a principal object of the invention to provide a method of advancing a sausage casing that improves upon the state of the art.
A further object of this invention is to use water in the stuffing tube in order to facilitate the movement of the sausage casing.
A still further object of this invention is to use pressurized fluids in the advancement of a casing along a stuffing tube.
These and other objects will be apparent to those